President Barack Obama won the support on Tuesday of Republican and Democratic leaders in the House for an attack on Syria,
As reported by NDTV, president Barack Obama won the support on Tuesday of Republican and Democratic leaders in the House for an attack on Syria, giving him a foundation to win broader approval for military action from a Congress that still harbours deep reservations.
Speaker John A. Boehner, who with other congressional leaders met Obama in the Oval Office, said afterward that he would “support the president’s call to action,” an endorsement quickly echoed by the House majority leader, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia.
Uncertainties abound, particularly in the House, where the imprimatur of the Republican leadership does not guarantee approval by rebellious rank and file, and where vocal factions in both parties are opposed to anything that could entangle the nation in another messy conflict in the Middle East.
Still, the expressions of support from top Republicans who rarely agree with Obama on anything suggest the White House may be on firmer footing than seemed the case on Saturday, when the president abruptly halted his plans for action in the face of growing protests from Congress.
On Tuesday evening, Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee agreed on a resolution that would give Obama authority to carry out a strike against Syria, for a period of 60 days, with one 30-day extension.
Shortly after that, Obama left for Sweden and Russia, where he will try to shore up an international coalition to punish Syria for a chemical weapons attack and will probably encounter some of the same debates that are cleaving the Capitol.
Before his departure, the White House intensified what has become the most extraordinary lobbying campaign of Obama’s presidency as it deployed members of his war council and enlisted political alumni of his 2008 campaign to press the argument with the public.
“This is not the time for armchair isolationism,” said Secretary of State John Kerry, who answered sharp questions and defended the administration’s strategy for Syria in nearly four hours of sometimes sharp exchanges before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
